


Don't it Beat a Slow Dance to Death?

by hi_irashay



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 09:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20580014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hi_irashay/pseuds/hi_irashay
Summary: The first time Will zoned, he didn’t quite understand why everyone was making such a big deal about it.  He lost some time - so what? What was time to a teenager. The world was made of time, he could get it back some other way.(AKA the Hannibal Sentinel AU literally no one asked for)(But like really it's only building the world of the Sentinel AU no one asked for, with very little plot)





	Don't it Beat a Slow Dance to Death?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FlameBlownWhiter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlameBlownWhiter/gifts).

> Love to my girl, one of the few people in this world for whom I will Consume a New Thing. I hope you enjoyed this Thing I wrote you that you probably didn't even want! <3.

The first time Will zoned, he didn’t quite understand why everyone was making such a big deal about it. He lost some time - so what? What was time to a teenager. The world was made of time, he could get it back some other way.

Yet, in spite of Will calmly explaining this to his father, his father remained inordinately concerned. Will lay in his bed that night, unable to help overhearing his parents whispered conversations even if he had wanted to. It was like… did his father even understand what it meant to be what he was? Clearly not. Obviously he could hear his father, who was, honestly, kind of an idiot.

An idiot who still somehow knew what to call him - a Sentinel.

As Will grew older and learned more about what it meant to be a Sentinel, the costs never seemed to outweigh the benefits. He could live with losing time if it meant he had a deeper understanding of the world around him. He could live with looking like an asshole, standing stock still in the middle of a room seemingly lost in his thoughts, if it meant he had knowledge others did not. It felt good to be special - no longer the poor motherless child, forgotten and abandoned, but the strange and powerful kid parents warned their children away from.

Will enjoyed testing his abilities at school. He would look at a scene and picture a golden pendulum, like that of a grandfather clock, passing over his vision, bringing him into deeper clarity and focus. He saw everything about these scenes - the minutiae of the details, yes, but also how the details got there. He could see exactly how all the parts fit together, each swing of the pendulum bringing him backwards until he finally reached the source. It was perfect, how everything always flowed logically, one thing seamlessly transitioning into another. Everything had a design.

It wasn’t until a few months in that Will realized his specific Sentinel abilities were different from others’. His father tried to force him into Sentinel support groups, to “socialize with others like him.” A bullshit premise, as none of them were ever truly like another, but Will played along. These other Sentinels, ranging in age from pre-pubescent to the elderly, did nothing but _ complain _. They did not understand, getting lost in the weeds instead of seeing how the whole swamp got created. This seemed to be a unique ability of Will’s, earning him odd looks when he tried to describe the golden pendulum that brought him to the truth.

"How do you not get lost in it?" they asked. 

"Easily," Will responded.

"It's too much to process," they complained.

"Not for me," Will retorted.

The other Sentinels didn’t appreciate their gift, hating the zones more than they liked the knowledge. All they wanted, all they craved, was something called a Guide. Or someone, Will was never sure. Everyone seemed to understand what “Guide” meant, and no amount of gold sweeps could bring Will to the same conclusions.

In the end, Will stopped going to the group after 3 sessions. In the end, he knew he was different even among a group of other different people. In the end, he was happiest in his own company and was content to stay away from whatever a “Guide” ended up being.

The first time Will understood what a “Guide” was, everything changed.

+++

The first time Will understood what a “Guide” was, he lost control. He was in college, walking down the street when he happened upon the aftermath of a hit-and-run. The victim lay in a pool of her own blood, and in an instant Will saw it all happen. While others screamed and cried in panic around him, the tell-tale golden sweep brought him into the driver’s seat

He kept driving in spite of seeing the girl on the ground in his rearview window. _ Sweep. _

He felt a jolt as his car hit the girl. _ Sweep. _

He saw his phone vibrating with a text, and reached out his arm to grab for it. _ Sweep. _

He left the coffee shop and got into his car. _ Sweep. _

He...

… He saw himself getting wrenched out of the zone, startled and confused. He saw a pair of concerned eyes peering into his. He saw, then felt, a warm hand on his shoulder. And Will knew, somehow, that those eyes and that hand had brought him back to the present.

This wasn’t what was supposed to happen, who gave them the right? Will shook his head and tried to call back the pendulum, but the hand was an insistent pressure that tethered him to the present moment.

“Are you alright, Sentinel?” The woman asked. “I apologize for being so forthright, but you looked like you were headed for a pretty bad zone there…” She quirked her eyebrow in question.

Will avoided her gaze and refused to answer, instead choosing to focus on the police and first responders who had since converged on the scene.

The woman persisted. “Do you have anyone you want me to call? Your Guide, maybe?” A beat. “I’m a Guide too, obviously, but I know I wouldn’t be as helpful as someone you’ve been working with.”

So THAT’S what a Guide is. Someone who… ruins it all, honestly. Will would never be able to get back to the clarity with this woman - this _ Guide _ \- around. Instead of feeling grateful for this woman, as social convention would dictate, he felt furious at her. She had robbed him of the truth and pretended she was doing him a favor. She had taken over, seized his control over his own actions. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair that she should have that power.

Will fumed, keeping his eyes resolutely trained on the coroner as he zipped up the body bag around the dead girl. The girl he had just seen so clearly in his periphery as he checked his text. The girl he hadn’t been able to stop in time to save. _ Wait, no. That wasn’t me. _ Will felt reassured at that thought - see? He didn’t need a Guide. Should he ever want to stop, he could do it himself perfectly fine.

The woman hesitated at Will’s continued silence, before finally removing her hand from his shoulder and stepping back. “Well, take care of yourself,” she said, with an odd inflection. Will breathed a sigh of relief after she walked away, resolving to avoid any further contact with Guides as much as possible.

Will went on to join the police force, working his way up through the ranks until he became a homicide detective. He liked his work, and his Sentinel abilities served him well. His colleagues were initially skeptical of his ability to function without a Guide - they had never met a Sentinel who was able to do so before, especially not in their line of work - but soon grew to trust him and, frankly, to rely on him to get the job done. He could solve the unsolvable, after all. What more could they ask of him?

The first time Will zoned on the job, everything changed.

+++

The first time Will zoned on the job, it all came crashing down.

“You’re putting yourself and your team in danger,” they said.

“You’ve seen too much, you’re in too deep, you need a break,” they said.

“Son, you have to be able to pull the trigger,” they said.

So they benched him, citing his inability to use necessary force as evidence enough to keep him out of field work. But Will knew the real reason, even without his golden pendulum - he was broken. He was damaged goods, and he was a liability.

And what’s worse, Will was scared to find out that he agreed. Increased exposure to violence was leading him to darker and darker places. Twisted notions popped up in his mind that hadn’t been there before, visions he couldn’t quite escape of memories that weren’t his. The lines were starting to blur between what he did and what he saw in his zones. It all blended together with or without the golden sweep. The dark designs of the killers became his own.

Worse still, Will sometimes couldn’t pull himself out anymore. But he did not trust any of the force’s Guides to help him. He could only rely on himself, but he was starting to fail.

Most terribly of all, Will started to view his Sentinel abilities as a curse.

He took the reprieve, and began teaching the next generation of recruits. He kept his head down and did his job, teaching the promising cadets all he could. There were things Will couldn’t teach them, of course - a large part of his skill came from being a Sentinel - but whatever was left was theirs for the taking. What words he could put to something so innate and instinctual, they could have.

He taught, and he taught, and he taught, until one day someone took notice and asked more of him. What Jack Crawford thought he could do with a broken hunting dog, nobody fully understood, but he still sent Will back out there. He didn’t send him alone, though. Jack introduced Will to Hannibal and pushed them on their way.

The first time Will zoned in Hannibal’s presence, everything changed.

+++

The first time Will zoned in Hannibal’s presence, everything was blood. It clogged every single one of his senses - touch, smell, sight, taste, sound, all subsumed in red, warmth, iron. 

Blood was Garrett Jacob Hobbs, muttering in the corner. 

_ See? _ No, Will couldn’t see - all there was was blood.

Blood was Abigail Hobbs, dying in spite of his clumsy ministrations. A steady fountain of it leaked out of her, traveling through her body, exiting at her throat.

Blood was in Hannibal’s eyes as he took over, cool and competent. He stopped the flow with steady hands, saving Abigail’s life under Will’s unseeing gaze. He took over, and Will gave up control willingly. The blood slowly receded from his senses, bringing him back to the Hobbs household, in Minnesota, in the United States, on planet Earth. Instead of blood, now all Will could sense was Hannibal.

It was a new and terrifying sensation.

Will got used to it, though, in a way he had never gotten used to another person before. Will didn’t even know if Hannibal was an actual Guide, but something about his presence called to Will. It wasn’t like his other brushes with Guides - he never felt robbed, of his clarity nor his agency. Instead, he felt… potentiated. As if Hannibal made him more, made him better than he could ever have been on his own. Another new feeling, a different kind of truth.

And yet, Will couldn’t shake the dark corners of his own mind. He started seeing Hannibal regularly, calling it psychiatric treatment to keep him balanced. Will found balance, sure, but it was a precarious one - the line between understanding these predators and their crimes, empathizing with them, and becoming them was a razor thin wire that Will walked daily.

Hannibal looked at Will as if he could see multitudes within him. Hannibal reached for his darkness and lightness in equal measure, providing the stasis upon which Will tried to remain. It seemed to work, for a time. Some days were better than others.

But, after all, another word for “balance” is “tension.” And Will felt that tension more keenly than he felt the balance. Hannibal raised him up in one moment and dragged him down in the next, and Will felt pulled in every direction. Pulled by Hannibal, by his senses, by his feelings, by his visions-turned-memories, by his nightmares. 

Will lost himself in it all, constantly semi-zoned. He clung to Hannibal in his waking moments, their sessions growing increasingly more desperate. He clung to Hannibal in his zones, his body bringing him back to Hannibal’s door while his mind and senses were otherwise occupied. He clung to Hannibal with one hand and let go of the rest of his life with the other.

He lost himself, but Hannibal found him time and time again. Pulling him up with a word, a look, a hand. Pulling him up and pushing him forward into the next direction, guiding him - Guiding him. 

_ Push me, pull me. _

This balance, this tension, it worked for them. 

_ Lift me, drop me. _

It worked up until the day he dropped too far.

“Can’t you see he’s had enough?” they said.

“He’s sick, it’s not his fault” they said.

“It’s your fault. You did this,” they said.

“You’re the killer,” they said.

They got him, in the end, and Will didn’t need to be a Sentinel to parse out the truths in their eyes. It had been him all along and he could no longer trust himself nor his abilities. The tension finally broke, leaving him at once stranded and adrift.

The first time Will zoned on Hannibal, everything changed.

+++

The first time Will zoned on Hannibal, the gold pendulum only brought him further into the darkness.

“Are you a killer, Will?” Hannibal had asked. _ Yes. _

“See?” Will had asked. _ No. _

The bars between them couldn’t stop them. Nothing could.

“Hello, Will” Hannibal said.

“Hello, Dr. Lecter” Will replied.

The last time Will zoned in Hannibal’s presence, everything changed.

+++

The last time Will zoned in Hannibal’s presence led to the first time he saw him clearly.

The first time Will saw Hannibal clearly, everything changed, and began anew.

**Author's Note:**

> IDK MAN, what even is this??!!?!?!?!?!
> 
> This is also where I reveal I only made it through 1 season of the show, so, keep that in mind if you're like BUT WAIT WHAT ABOUT XYZ DETAILS?!?!?! haha. Fun times though!!!! I sort of ran out of time writing the last bit (SORRY), but alas.
> 
> Title from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gW9G86nReg


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